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Lawmakers Direct HHS to Explore Possibility of Creating Web Site to Alert Physicians to Biological Threats

Congress has directed HHS to investigate the feasibility and potential benefits of creating a Web site to provide physicians with medical alerts and treatment protocols for biological threats, Federal Computer Week reports. Legislators instructed HHS to work with the CDC, NIH and the medical community to determine whether a physician-only Web site is needed and what information and features it should provide. Lawmakers said the plan is designed to encourage interagency cooperation in helping physicians receive necessary information. "Some of the state agencies don't have good communications, and the idea is how to make things more accessible out there," Bettilou Taylor, the minority staff counsel for the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Education and HHS, said. The initiative was included in the fiscal year 2002 Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which President Bush signed earlier this month. The bill did not provide funds for the project (Federal Computer Week, 1/18).

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